


The meaning of ‘captain’

by Yui_Miyamoto



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cross-Posted on LiveJournal, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-19
Updated: 2004-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28677924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yui_Miyamoto/pseuds/Yui_Miyamoto
Summary: Tezuka remembers about the inspiration that Yamato-buchou gave him.
Relationships: Echizen Ryouma/Tezuka Kunimitsu, Tezuka Kunimitsu/Yamato Yuudai





	The meaning of ‘captain’

**Disclaimer: Tennis no Oujisama isn’t Yui’s.**  
  
He should have let well enough alone.  
And then, maybe I could have lived the rest of my life (or at least the part associated with him), in peace.  
  
Then again, everyone says that…  
…especially when they’re unable to say goodbye or let go of the past.  
  
 **The meaning of ‘captain’  
By miyamoto yui**  
  
 _When I first tried out for the team as a freshman, they looked at me with a skeptical attitude that permeated into all their looks, feelings, and performances. I watched them so carefully, still having not comprehended the ability to believe in my own abilities. I was living on the desperation of my talent and love for the game, but never really truly understanding what it meant to be a player.  
I didn’t know that until he came onto the courts. He walked onto the main court and opened the fenced gate with his hand.  
  
His hand stayed on the door while the other one went on his hip with his Seigaku jacket draped over his shoulders like a cape. He didn’t look intimidating, but what respect they gave him.  
From one corner to the other, there was a complete silence. It almost seemed like a god had come onto our high school’s tennis courts._  
 _Maybe that was partly true.  
  
But I didn’t know what this meant. I knew how to be polite and to respect other people, but my respect for our captain was still not as much as the other people around me, who were much older than me. I was the only freshman.  
He just nodded his head as a small smile came to his lips. His eyes seemed to gaze around, but you couldn’t tell that he was because of his sunglasses. You could only tell when he turned his head a little from side to side.  
  
Those sunglasses drove me up the wall.  
My stoical attitude didn’t amount to much if you saw how those sunglasses made me go crazy with frustration. I didn’t show it, but I felt it whenever I played him.  
  
But that wasn’t just limited to the green spaces with their painted white lines…  
  
After one sempai hit my elbow, I wanted to quit the team. Syuichirou didn’t want me to. That made me stop to think more about the most difficult decision I had ever had at that point in my life. And then the captain told me not to. Just because people like that did that to you, did that mean you were to give up?  
No. That just meant that you had to kick their asses later at their own game.  
  
“Become the pillar of Seigaku.”  
  
Later on that week, he and I played a match. Evening was approaching and he threw up the ball.  
  
Thwack, thwack, thwack…  
  
As we sat side by side with our backs on the fences of the courts, we huffed and puffed while wiping our faces with white towels. We both drank from our water bottles.  
He finished faster than me. Looking up to the sky, he asked, “Let me ask you. Why would you make such a rash decision? You don’t seem the type.”  
I took my lips off the straw and looked at the fence on the other side of the court to avoid gazing at him. It was partly in embarrassment and some of it was in shame. “It was on principle. They didn’t even respect me as a human being.”  
“I do understand your point, don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying that it’s harder to live through things that aren’t fair. It’s always easy to give up.” He put his hand gently on my head, but he was still looking at the stars up in that clear, dark violet sky. “Can you give up something you love so easily?”  
  
There was silence.  
  
As I was about to open my mouth to answer, he took off his hand from my head and put it under my chin to tilt my head so that my eyes would look up to the burning balls of gas shining brightly above us. “How will you ever reach what’s up there if you keep on looking at what’s in front of you?”  
  
At that, he took of his hand from my chin and I continued to stare up at the sky. Only for a moment did I depend on his hand to keep my head balanced and steady, but when he let go, I knew I had to do it on my own.  
He walked away quietly and when I finally turned my head to look at him, his jacket was waving in back of him.  
  
I was simply awed. _  
_That was the day I began to understand what they were all saying about the captain through their silence whenever he came into the courts...  
  
 **+/+/+/+/+/**  
  
The sempais who were talking about me when I first joined and thought that I was being arrogant about my left-hand playing, they were whispering about different things around me. And even though I tried to ignore them, because I knew the truth behind all the rumors, I couldn’t but help but feel annoyed. The whispers wouldn’t stop.  
They were the kind that when you came into a room, an awkward silence would immediately follow. It wasn’t the air of respect, but one of disrespect. Of course, I was terrible at showing how angry I was. That energy came out in the courts as “passion”.  
  
But what did passion really mean?  
  
If I asked the captain such a stupid question, would he laugh at me? Would he re-evaluate what he thought about me and take back what he said when he asked me to become the “pillar of Seigaku”?  
  
As I retied my shoelaces in the locker room, I sighed. I looked at my shoes and then I leaned back onto the wall.  
There was no one there anyway. And no one would be there for a while.  
  
I needed time to breathe.  
  
In between studying at home, tennis practice, and keeping up my guard all the time, I was exhausted both mentally and physically. On top of that, there was no one to trust.  
  
He didn’t let allow me to be this way, though. He didn’t leave me alone.  
  
Click. The door opened and I turned my head to my left side to look up and see him there in the doorway. I thought he was with the coach and wouldn’t be here for a while, just enough time for me to avoid him.  
  
Those rumors did things to me. I couldn’t look up to the captain without freezing up inside. But when people gave you suggestions, it was only natural that you thought about them…  
  
But that night, I had a dream about him kissing me. I just couldn’t understand if I was more appalled, disgusted, accepting, scared, or all of the above.  
  
Interrupting my thoughts, he suddenly asked with a smile, “Want to play a match with me, Tezuka-kun?”  
  
Unable to say no because I admired him too much, I found myself on the courts before I could protest that maybe I should have been heading home. I watched him and how he played and the rumors were soon forgotten.  
I was immersed at how well he played. Even though he complimented me at the end of the game, the only thing I could do was bow my head humbly and say, “Thank you, but I still have a lot to learn.”  
“But what is it that you want to ask me, Tezuka-kun?” he asked me as he changed in the locker room.  
  
I took off my shirt a second slower than usual so that he couldn’t tell how shocked I was when my eyes slightly opened widely. “How did he know?” I thought to myself.  
I thought that I kept my feelings inside of me so well hidden that no one could tell. But how could he have seen right through me?  
  
I didn’t like how perceptive he was through those sunglasses of his.  
  
Putting my shirt, I placed my glasses on my face once more. I looked at him again, but this time, I was looking into his eyes. He didn’t have his sunglasses on.  
  
He was staring straight at me with his bag over his shoulder. He pressed, “I could tell while you were playing. What is it you’d like to ask me?”  
I took up my bag and said, “What do you play for, Yamato-buchou?”  
  
My hands couldn’t pick up my bag, though. I held onto to the strap with both of my hands unable to lift it up. _  
_But my eyes looked deeply into his. I had to know.  
  
“Do you love to play tennis?” He put down his bag on the bench, but he stood there looking into my eyes wanting an answer that was still trying to find itself within me.  
“Yes, I do,” I found myself answering with an embarrassed smile on my face as I looked down at the floor.  
  
Tennis was everything to me. It justified all the sacrifices because it gave me so much happiness to be on the court knowing that I did this all by myself. It was the one thing that didn’t require me to be the best student in my class, the dutiful son.  
  
I chose it. I chose to be here.  
  
“Then why are you asking me if our answers are the same?”  
  
My eyes focused on him once more. The grip on the strap of my bag became tighter.  
Then, he asked, “You’re depending too much on it, Tezuka-kun.”  
“What?” I almost thought that I didn’t hear what he said correctly.  
  
In surprise, I let go of the strap as if it were a dead weight.  
  
“That’s not love. Love is believing, not desperation.” He began to walk over to me.  
I took a step backwards, but he stood in front of me. I looked up to him as he looked down at me.  
  
Those eyes…  
were so overwhelming…  
  
I almost wished he was wearing his sunglasses so that I wouldn’t have had to watch him.  
  
“I play because I want to become stronger. I need to become stronger,” he told me with a glint of sorrow.  
The all-powerful captain wasn’t as calm as everyone perceived him to be.  
  
Even I thought he couldn’t have been this way. The captain never showed any kind of weaknesses.  
  
“Why do you need to become stronger?”  
“Because how can I protect the one thing I love most in the world if I don’t know everything about it? It’s useless to say you love something when you don’t even know how you’re going about trying to understand it.”  
  
Then, he turned around to get his bag. It almost seemed as if he was angry when his back turned away from me. And he was. When his eyes glanced at me, he said, “If you can’t understand that, Tezuka-kun, don’t come back here.”  
  
The door closed before I coughed. My body told me I stopped breathing. It was reminding me that I needed to breathe in order to live.  
  
My heart felt so hard that I didn’t know if it was even there. His words ran through my head over and over as my eyes blankly watched the motionless door that had already closed before me.  
  
I didn’t go to practice for a couple of days. In fact, I avoided it all together. I practiced for hours at another place, unable to stop myself from doing tennis all together. After all, when you were used to a routine, it was hard to break a habit.  
  
A habit. Was that it all came to?  
  
Pwack!  
The last ball served hit the fence behind me.  
  
Was that what he meant? Was I doing this out of being so used to it that I had mistaken it for loving the game? But I did. I really did love the game.  
  
But what was desperation? Did I really depend on tennis too much to define who I was and what I did? He was right.  
  
Thwack.  
Another ball came towards me and I hit it.  
  
Another after another, I hit the balls without worrying if I did something incorrectly. As long as I was having fun, that was all that mattered.  
  
That night, I found the captain coming out of the school entrance. He was about to go past me, but I stood in front of him. I bowed before him. “Please play a match with me, Yamato-buchou!”  
“Why? It’s useless to play someone who’s mechanical.”  
I could feel the coldness of his eyes on me.  
  
I couldn’t stand it. I admired him so much!  
  
The one person I truly trusted enough to show my feelings to…  
  
His eyes looked at all the cuts around my arms, legs, and fingers. They found their way to my face.  
  
Then, I found myself shouting, “I’m not a machine! I am Tezuka Kunimitsu!”  
  
Why…  
Why doesn’t anyone ever think that I have feelings?  
  
I didn’t want to cry even though tears wanted to come out of my eyes. They were my pent up feelings coming out.  
  
It was tiring to be one of the top students. It was exhausting being the obedient, disciplined son. I was tired.  
  
This was the only thing I was truly good at, and it was with no one’s help. But in order to get through that next hurdle, which was more difficult than all the others before this one, I had to get through him.  
  
At that moment, he dropped his bag to wrap his arms around my shoulders. “It’s all right, Tezuka-kun.”  
My hands bunched into fists, still unable to fully depend on someone when I was so used to taking it all by myself.  
  
“I can see that you’ve grown in just a few days.”  
“But I need to play you, Yamato-buchou.” I desperately told him, on the brink of crying.  
He shook his head. “No, Tezuka…I’m trying to tell you that your worth isn’t limited to tennis.”  
  
His hug became firmer as he gently told me, “That’s why I picked you to be the pillar of Seigaku. Of all the people here, you’re the one who is not only determined, but I knew you had the potential. I believe you can lead us to victory. Not because of your skill…  
“…but because I saw that you could lead them to believe in themselves. Inspire them to become better players, but more so in becoming the people they want to become.”  
  
The captain smiled at me. “When you do everything you’re told to, that’s all you ever amount to. A suave person can do that. That’s not what anyone needs to hear. What people need is someone that cares. A person that cares will guide them. And inspiration will follow.  
“The inspiration to be one’s best.”  
  
The grip I had on my bag was lost. Plop.  
  
My hands lifted up to hug him back._  
  
  
 ** _+/+/+/+/+/_**  
  
 _From then on, we became best friends. After practice, he sometimes gave me stuff. We didn’t hang out very much but whenever I needed advice, he was always there.  
But as more and more time passed by, I was growing up. And soon, I had to face the fact that he was graduating.  
  
That he would no longer be with me.  
  
On the day before he was graduating, we had one last match. We went all out, but it was on this day that I truly beat him. He smiled as we came to the middle of the court with the net separating us.  
  
Yamato-buchou held his hand out to shake mine. I lifted my hand up to shake it.  
“You finally beat me, Tezuka.”  
I shook my head. “Thank you for letting me have this match with you, Yamato-buchou.”  
The grip on my hand became a bit tighter. Then, it finally let go.  
  
He began to laugh as we headed over to the locker room. “You’re so different from the freshman I first saw playing for a position as a regular.”  
I nodded my head. “That’s because you led me to where I needed to go.”  
  
We changed in silence.  
  
And then, I turned to him, but he kept his back towards me even though he wasn’t moving.  
  
Without any sense of embarrassment, I directly questioned, “How do I ever repay that? What did you ever learn from me? What could you have ever needed me for, Yamato-buchou?”  
  
Turning around, he smiled and I was looking into his clear eyes once more. He walked towards me and stood in front of me.  
  
He didn’t touch me at all, not even to hug me. That disappointed me.  
  
The captain just continued to stare at me, but then, he sighed.  
  
“Tezuka…” he began to say. He reached out his hand to me and put his hand on the top of my head. His fingers touched my hair.  
  
There was a long pause before he said to me, “Without you Tezuka, I wouldn’t have realized how much I loved tennis.”  
“I don’t understand, Buchou.”  
“The day I told you the difference between desperation and belief, I was also talking to myself. Because you looked up to me more as to who I was than what I did, I was a little confused about my role as captain.” He leaned his face closer towards me that I felt his breath. The captain smiled at me while looking even deeper into my eyes. “You taught me what it really meant to be a captain, Tezuka. That’s what you’ve done.”  
  
For a moment longer, we stared at one another.  
  
It was as if he wanted to tell me more…  
…but I would never know.  
  
He took his hand away and I felt the warmth of his touch dissipate. Without looking back, he took up his bag and left me there with my chest crunching and my mind thinking too many things without being able to salvage anything.  
  
I knew that I would miss him when he left. But until he went away, I didn’t realize how much I loved this person. Until he was gone, I didn’t know that I loved him so much.  
  
Being the way I was though, I wouldn’t have been able to tell him though._  
  
That’s why when I found myself in the locker room with Echizen looking at me with his unwavering gaze at me, wanting an answer, I finally understood what Yamato-buchou was telling me through all the time he was my captain.  
I was holding onto the top of his head after pushing his white cap aside. It fell onto the ground as we were looking intensely at one another.  
  
Looking at his confident eyes towards me, I became aware of how truly imperfect I was, how I had much more to learn about believing in myself, even with all my training and self-confidence.  
  
In the end, I didn’t know anything at all. Except that I fell more and more in love with the game of tennis…  
  
…because of the person in front of me.  
  
But that line was becoming blurry. Falling deeper and deeper into both.  
  
I was beginning to become unable to see one without the other.  
  
 **Owari. / The End.  
**

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been a short time since I’ve done a new fic and even though I was working on two other ones, an idea popped into my head. * laughs * Isn’t that the usual thing for every writer? Well, I’ve liked this pairing since I saw one (yes, just ONE) dj pic of Yamato-buchou kissing a freshman Tezuka.


End file.
